Beamex is your partner for calibration excellence, providing accurate measurements, reliable data, and traceability for a safer and less uncertain world. Since its founding in 1975, Beamex has been a trusted partner for calibration excellence, helping its customers to continuously improve efficiency, ensure compliance, and increase safety in their operations. Beamex strives to set the industry standard both in terms of its ways of working and its level of expertise in the field, and today it serves more than 12,000 customers in more than 140 different countries.
Interview with Jan-Henrik Svensson, CEO of Beamex.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Jan-Henrik Svensson: Beamex develops, manufactures, and sells calibration hardware, software, and related services and provides support for customers throughout the entire lifecycle of their solutions. We strive to be a partner who can help our customers achieve calibration excellence, because for most of them calibration is not their core business. Our goal is to help them achieve a data-driven, paperless, digitalized calibration process with the help of our state-of-the-art solutions. We see ourselves as far more than a mere technology supplier; we want to be a trustworthy partner and a true pioneer in our field.
We serve customers in a wide variety of industries, including oil & gas, power and energy, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food and beverages. What ties these sectors together is that they are all heavily regulated and therefore reliant on accurate, traceable measurements, which is our core business.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
J.H.S: Product development is a core part of our strategy. In order to maintain our position as a technology leader we have a target to launch at least three major new solutions every year. We have recently introduced three groundbreaking new solutions to the market that I believe are real gamechangers.
The first is Logical, our cloud-based calibration software that customers can purchase on a subscription basis and which eliminates the need for manual data entry for a faster and more reliable calibration process. Secondly, there is the Beamex ePG, an electrical pressure pump for industrial pressure calibration applications, which removes the need to use manual hand pumps and enables fully automatic pressure calibration. Finally, we have the Beamex MC6-T Multifunction Temperature Calibrator and Communicator, which combines state-of-the-art automated temperature calibration functionality with multifunction process calibrator technology. It’s an all-in-one solution that documents calibrations and communicates with calibration software, enabling a fully paperless, digital calibration process that saves time and reduces the risk of errors. In a nutshell, it’s a laboratory in a box!
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
J.H.S: I prefer to talk about Beamex not as a provider of separate products and services, but as a creator of a calibration ecosystem that process industry customers can integrate with at a level that suits them best. On a high level our calibration offering covers solutions for pressure, temperature, electrical signals, and weight. But as industry evolves and sustainability and circular economy thinking become more critical, we are seeing an increased need for completely new kinds of measurements relating to, for example, emissions and traceability in material handling. We can address these needs through our unique combination of hardware, software, and services.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
J.H.S: Traditionally, calibration has been seen as a process that supports quality, providing a seal of approval that your process is compliant with regulations and that whatever you are manufacturing meets the required quality standards. This is changing as we see our customers calibrating less for their auditors and more for themselves, to help improve efficiency and sustainability through trustable, traceable calibration data in the same way that they leverage other ‘big data’ from their processes.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
J.H.S: We have identified several megatrends that are driving our industry and the customers we serve. The digitalization of industrial operations is a hot topic and an area where we have been active since the mid 80s. Sustainability and the circular economy are high on everyone’s agenda, but particularly important in process industries, which can be highly carbon intensive.
Next there is the increasing convergence of operational technology and information technology, with plants transitioning from being isolated islands based on manual processes to high-tech, highly automated, cloud-connected environments. Instead of discussing solely with engineers or maintenance managers, we are increasingly interacting with CIOs, data analysts, and IT solution owners. And along with the rise of cloud connectivity and automation there is the safety and cybersecurity aspect to take into consideration too.
Modularity is another a big trend. As industries seek to move closer to their customers and develop increasingly personalized products, from food to medicines, they are adopting modular, distributed ways of working that demand new measurements and a completely different approach to calibration.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
J.H.S: As I said earlier, rather than singling out individual products I prefer to focus on our evolving calibration ecosystem because it is a genuinely innovative and future-proof platform. As one of our customers said, I don’t care if it uses the cloud, the moon, or the sun, you can rely on the Beamex ecosystem to help you grow and succeed.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
J.H.S: This year is shaping up to be just as successful as 2021, which was a record year for us in terms of sales and growth in market share. Things are changing so quickly as digital technologies evolve and businesses rely more and more on connectivity to function and grow. Measurement and monitoring are more important than ever and are behind every aspect of our daily lives and the process industries that serve our needs. I can say with confidence that Beamex is looking forward to another year of big changes and healthy growth.